From: History of the Western Reserve pgs 1165-1166
Harriet Taylor Upton and H. G. Cutler
Published by The Lewis publishing company

GORDON FREEBORN MATTESON.—It was largely through the efforts, strenuous efforts, and heroic sacrifices of staid New England's sons that the Western Reserve derived her courage, her enterprise, her public spirit, and her inspiration for converting the forest-covered lands into thriving hamlets, populous villages and towns, and valuable and attractive agricultural regions. Conspicuous among those that dared the dangers and privations of frontier life in the early part of the last century was Major Matteson, father of Gordon F. Matteson, of this brief sketch.

A son of Freeborn Matteson, Major Matteson was born October 10, 1799, in Shaftsbury,Vermont, and there spent the earlier years of his life. He married, while living in Bennington county, his native place, Patience Matteson, whose birth occurred July 4, 1800. In 1834 Major Matteson and his family came to Ohio, locating in Hiram, Portage county, in the very house from which Rigdon and Smith, Mormons, were taken by the mob that tarred and feathered them. They subsequently moved to a place near the present Matteson homestead, and the following year bought the farm now owned and occupied by their son Gordon. They improved the land, and carried on general farming the remainder of their lives, the major dying December 21, 1872, while his wife, who preceded him to the better land, passed away May 13, 1861. They were the parents of four children, two of whom were born in Vermont, and the other two in Ohio.

Succeeding to the ownership of the parental acres, Gordon F. Matteson is numbered among the foremost agriculturists of this part of the county. As a boy he assisted his father in clearing and improving the homestead, watching with gratification its gradual development from a dense forest to a valuable farm, yielding abundant harvests each season, and in its transformation he was an important factor. He was born April 25, 1839, in the old log cabin that stood upon the place when his parents bought it, and in the schools of the neighborhood acquired his elementary education. He subsequently completed his studies at the Hiram Eclectic Institute, of which James A. Garfield was then the principal, that being before the organization of the school into Hiram College.

Mr. Matteson married first, in 1864, Mary Roberts, of Hiram, Ohio, and they became the parents of two children, namely: Hugh Frank, born May 28, 1871. and a child that died when but a week old. Hugh Frank Matteson married first, in Garrettsville, Ohio, in 1891, Birdie Holcomb, who died December i, 1892. He married second, in Ravenna, Ohio. Emogene Ramsdell, and they have two children. Fred James and Frank Gordon, twins, born February 24, 1900. Mrs. Mary (Roberts) Matteson died in 1876. and Mr. Matteson married for his second wife. June 19. 1879, Carrie Sherwood. Mrs. Matteson was born in Nelson, Portage county, Ohio, of New England stock. Her father, Ebenezer Sherwood, was born January 24, 1810, in West Cornwall. Connecticut, and when a young man drove across the country from his New England home to Portage county. Ohio, locating in Nelson. There, on May 24, 1835, he married Joanna McCall, who was born at Parkman, Ohio, and to them five children were born. Mrs. Sherwood's paternal grandfather, Deacon Sherwood, a native of West Cornwall, Connecticut, married Anna Bonney, who was born and bred in Cornwall, Connecticut.

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